At present, communities of color are under-represented in government in
the US. Although African Americans make up over 12% of the population
of America, there are only 42 black Delegates in the US House, and only
one black Senator. This pattern is repeated for other ethnic and racial
groups and on a state and local level.

While there are many reasons for the under-representation of people of
color in America, winner-take-all election systems do nothing to help.
Under winner-take-all, 50.1% of the population can control 100% of
seats, leaving minority groups without any representation. In places
with a history of racially polarized voting, this has often resulted in
white voters swamping the votes of other communities, leading to
legislatures which do not reflect the demographic composition of those
they represent.

In 1965, the federal government adopted the Voting Rights Act, to
ensure access for all citizens to the ballot. It soon became clear,
however, that the right to vote did not necessarily translate into
electing representatives for groupings of voters who were in the
minority. In many jurisdictions, particularly in the South, voters who
historically had faced racial discrimination -- including
African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Pacific Americans and Native
Americans -- were unable to elect candidates of their choice in most
elections. In 1982, the Voting Rights Act was amended to include
provisions requiring certain jurisdictions to take steps to give
minority voters an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.

To allow voters in an isolated minority to elect candidates, the
solution in a majority, winner-take-all system initially was to turn
the minority into a majority through drawing legislative districts to
turn an overall racial minority into a majority in a particular
district. But such an approach has limitations, especially where the
minority group is dispersed geographically or interspersed with other
groups of minority voters. As the American population becomes
increasingly diverse and increasingly mobile, it becomes much harder to
group communities into stable single-member districts, and every
redistricting can threaten a return to under-representation. In the
1990s, race-conscious districts also ran into serious problems at the
Supreme Court, which outlawed explicit "racial gerrymanders." This made
it even harder to use single-member districts as a mechanism to provide
fair representation.

In Detroit, there have been three mayors in the past two years and the current one has come under scrutiny. Perhaps a system like instant runoff voting will help bring political stability to motor city.